Pre-press color-proofing is a procedure that is used by the printing industry for creating representative images of printed material without the high cost and time that is required to actually produce printing plates and set up a high-speed, high volume, printing press to produce an example of the intended image. The process of producing an example of an intended image may require several corrections and be reproduced several times to satisfy the customer which, if printing plates were produced corresponding to each correction, would result in significantly higher-costs to the customer.
A commercially available image processing apparatus is described in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,268,708. This image processing apparatus forms an intended image on a sheet of thermal print media by transferring dye from several sheets of dye donor material, one sheet at a time, to the thermal print media. Thermal energy is applied to the dye donor sheets by a laser to form the intended image.
Once the intended image meets the customers requirements, imagesetter recording films required for exposing printing plates are produced. These imagesetter recording films are generated on a separate apparatus such as an imagesetter. The inagesetter recording films are used to expose printing plates on yet another machine. Printing plates may also be produced on a separate apparatus without using imagesetter film for exposing.
Although available image processing apparatus' operate in a satisfactory manner, a need exists to expose imagesetter recording film on the same apparatus that is used to generate color proofs. Producing imagesetter recording film on the same machine used to produce color proofs eliminates the need for a separate machine. However, producing imagesetter recording film produces residual dye that must be removed from the color-proofer, otherwise the color proofer performance will deteriorate due to buildup of dye residue.